October 9, 2008

F# and Functional Programming Resources

F# is a functional language, created by Microsoft. Implemented under .NET CLR, it’s a typed language, with access to .NET framework. It inherits most of ML/OCaml features.

F# was born in Microsoft Research, and its main creator is Don Syme. Although is a functional language, it supports object programming, too. After years of development, now it’s mature. It’s gaining momentum in scientific community, thanks to its flexibility: it’s not limited to its own library: it can access all .NET framework (The image at left shows F# program running a demo using DirectX from .NET).

Citing Expert F# book promotion at Apress:

While inspired by OCaml, F# isn’t just another functional programming language. Drawing on many of the strengths of both OCaml and .NET, it’s a general–purpose language ideal for real–world development. F# integrates functional, imperative, and object–oriented programming styles so you can flexibly and elegantly solve programming problems, and brings .NET development alive with interactive execution. Whatever your background, you’ll find that F# is easy to learn, fun to use, and extraordinarily powerful. F# will help change the way you think about and go about programming.

There is lot of information about the language. This post is a collection of links, blogs, posts, resources, books, about this very interesting language.

Examples

F# Books

Every professional .NET programmer needs to learn about FP, and there’s no better way to do it than by learning F#–and no easier way to learn F# than from Foundations of F#. Written by F# evangelist Rob Pickering, this is an elegant, comprehensive introduction to all aspects of the language and an incisive guide to using F# for real-world professional development.

by Robert Pickering | ISBN-13: 978-1-59059-757-6 | Published May 2007 | 360pp.

Written by F#’s inventor and two major contributors to its development, Expert F# is the authoritative, comprehensive, and in–depth guide to the language and its use. Designed to help others become experts, the first part of the book quickly yet carefully describes the F# language. The second part then carefully shows how to use F# elegantly for a wide variety of practical programming tasks.

F# for Scientists will bring you up to speed with basic syntax and programming language concepts. Written in a clear and concise style with practical and enlightening examples, this book is accessible and easy to understand. By reviewing the Visual Studio screen shots that illustrate compilation, debugging and interactive use, you will understand both the functional aspects of F# and the object-oriented task-based features that make F# so useful in practice.